Finally had the chance to order Yella through NetFlix. Yella is compelling cinema, and Petzold is a talented filmmaker. Yella, played by the terrific actress Nina Hoss, is trying to escape her life in a small city east of the Elbe. She has been offered a high-powered job in Hannover and returns home to pack her things. But her violent ex-husband can't let her go. Driving her to the train station he swerves off a bridge. Somehow she survives and manages to make it to the city west of the Elbe. In a sterile corporate hotel she encounters a business development executive for a private equity firm who bears an uncanny resemblance to her former husband. Yella discovers she has natural talent as an equity analyst and deal maker, but is still haunted by her past, which eventually catches up to her in a trick ending.
The movie is quite good until the ending, which I found unnecessarily contrived. I especially enjoyed the scenes where Yella and her lover were negotiating investment deals with management teams. The "corporate-speak" and the settings were exact and recognizable to anyone familiar with the business. Also quite good was the contrast between the old and slow-moving life in the east and the constant motion in the west as the characters drive from one meeting to the next in soulless corporate parks. One thought I had though watching Yella: why are investors - and business executives in general - always portrayed as corrupt and evil in movies? I guess a competent and ethical business person doesn't offer enough dramtic tension.
In any case, Christian Petzold has found a fruitful theme in the current national disconnect between eastern and western Germany - a theme he develops further in his newest feature film Jerichow, which has been released in the US with very positive reviews.
UPDATE: I had the chance to see the creepy 1962 film Carnival of Souls, which provided the inspiration for Yella. I like the way that Petzold took the essential plot elements (the car plunging off the bridge, the disturbed girl) and placed them in a coherent narrative of present day Germany. The earlier film is a classic American film, since the girl finds herself in a strange small city of stifiling conformity.
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